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What it argues
Who Is Michael Ovitz? is the memoir of the man who built Creative Artists Agency into the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood and then, in the space of a few years, lost nearly everything. Ovitz co-founded CAA in 1975 with four other junior agents, and by the late 1980s the agency represented virtually every major Hollywood star and director. He pioneered the package deal — bundling clients together into a single offer to studios — and used that leverage to shift power in the film industry from studios to talent for the first time.
The first half of the book is the rise. Ovitz describes building CAA with a discipline and secrecy that he explicitly modeled on the CIA and Japanese business culture. Agents shared information internally and protected it externally. He worked punishing hours and expected the same from his team. The culture he created was admired and feared in equal measure, and the book is most interesting here, when Ovitz is describing how an organization built on information asymmetry actually functions day to day.
What it gets right
- 1.
Packaging deals — combining a writer, director, and star from the same agency into a single offer — shifted power from studios to talent agencies and became the dominant model of Hollywood deal-making.
- 2.
Ovitz modeled CAA's culture on organizational principles borrowed from the CIA and Japanese corporate structure: strict hierarchy, internal information sharing, external opacity.
- 3.
The same ruthlessness that builds power rarely translates into the consensus-building required to hold institutional authority. Ovitz was far more effective as an outside operator than as an inside executive.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Michael Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995, during which time CAA became the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood. He represented clients including Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand, and hundreds of others. After a failed tenure as President of Walt Disney Company under Michael Eisner, he founded a management company and later a venture capital firm focused on technology investments. Who Is Michael Ovitz? is his only book. He continues to invest and advise in entertainment and technology from Los Angeles.
